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We are in the process of updating and streamlining this site. Please email savetheplot@yahoo.co.uk if you have any problems with opening pages etc...
The story so far
We have also separated out the letters and signs onto some other pages, with brief explanations where necessary, hopefully it will make the site easier to navigate. Haven't saved them all in yet, but this is a start:
Click here for more coverage and correspondence
The parish council objected, so did the neighbouring town council (it is in the parish of Launton, but very near to Bicester).
The National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners objected, so did Friends of the Earth, so did the Campaign to Protect Rural England, so did MEP Caroline Lucas, so did gardening expert Cleve West, who writes for The Independent newspaper.
Jeremy Burchardt, who is an expert on the history of the allotment movement, and who has written books on the subject, believes Skimmingdish to be one of the oldest surviving sites in the country, and wrote a letter of objection on heritage grounds.
Gardeners' World and Observer columnist Monty Don also supports our campaign as does our MP Tony Baldry, who has written several letters to the Bishop Of Oxford seeking a compromise.
Finally, the matter came to Cherwell District Council. The planning authority for this area. They objected. Unanimously.
It can go on spending money fighting its case, to appeal and to the government if it believes that is the right thing to do, despite the mass of opposition.
But it is sad that it has come to this: church vs council, church vs people, when the whole alleged reason the church wants to develop the land is because it needs the money to pay its vicars (and its professional advisors!).
Links to other pages on other parts of the website that I have not yet updated. Bear with me, I'm doing this in html, so it is never going to look fancy!!
This is how diggers left the site after taking a number of 20m trial scrapes for archaelogists, knocking down a few perfectly good sheds in the process. They later filled in the holes, but the sheds are mainly wrecked.
links to some of our press coverage, hope to update and add to this soon too
You can email us at savetheplot@yahoo.co.uk any time. we check our mail regularly...hoping for a reprieve from the bishop!
We have so far enlisted the support of approximately 180 local people, who objected to a speculative planning application for office blocks there: either by doing so online via the council's form; via a form that Pauline, David and I distributed to houses nearby (and that people bothered to return to us - sometimes by hand, sometimes by post, and most touchingly, when an elderly chap came along in his electric buggy), or via their own letters to the council.
Unfortunately that doesn't mean the church has to return the land to allotments.